


If You Don't Stop This, No One Will

by skye_of_stars



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Background AkuRoku, Canon Divergence, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/F, Multiple Pov, Sadomasochism, actually pretty plot heavy though the kink is Also there, dubcon, evil!Naminé, implied Soriku at least in the Riku-to-Sora direction, in which Naminé is a more effective villain than any Xehanort has ever been, sm, though it's just Naminé for the first several chapters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:01:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 15
Words: 16,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26015428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skye_of_stars/pseuds/skye_of_stars
Summary: Naminé is a powerless victim, forced to destroy others--Naminé is powerless--Until she realizes she is not.But sometimes, seeing the truth is worse. Sometimes taking responsibility for your own actions is worse. Because if she did not stop this then, how can she now? If she really is the monster, why would she try to become anything else?And so the web tightens, and the girl at the center who thinks herself a monster grins.
Relationships: Larxene/Naminé (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 15





	1. The destruction of a heart, pt.1

_There’s no one there in the mirror._

No one there under her skin, either.

Naminé can imagine—a pencil under the right place—she'd peel her skin off—peel off the layers until it’s only blood that pretends to be alive. Only blood that pretends not to be a monster.

Because she is the monster. The center of the spiderweb twisting into a garrote to cut off the head, the heart of the only person who—

But that’s a lie, too.

It’s all a lie.

The mirror taunts her, flat against a perfectly white wall. Perfectly white bed. Perfectly white stool, perfectly white paper—only the crayons have a semblance of color, but even that seems washed out in this place.

Faded. Ready to be forgotten.

She has a name, but the name isn’t a name. She had a self, once, but that’s a different person, long lost to her on islands she’s never seen except in memories that aren’t hers. And she’s trying to erase that person, too, from her _friend’s_ heart—her friend, her hero, her savior—Sora, the only person who would ever love her—

—because she _makes him_ love her. Even now, the web is tightening. The rope, twisting.The chains… well, she’s nothing but chains.

If she were real—

Darkness opens in her room, the only thing that can offset the endless white. And from the darkness, a woman whose every smile is claws.

Naminé shrinks back as if she was the scared little girl she looks like. As if she was anyone at all.

“Oh, _sorry_ ,” the woman, the nymph of pain and suffering, says. “I thought this was my room, but since I’ve made such a _mistake_ here, I might as well check up on your progress.” She smiles, but she doesn’t giggle. That’s the one silver lining. “He _loves_ you by now, _right_?”

Naminé’s spit is too thick in her mouth to swallow her shame. Her monstrous machinations. Her—

“Oh, don’t look like _that_! You’re doing _great_!” The lightning-touched woman leans in closer, claws already far too close to Naminé’s throat. “You _are_ doing great _, right_?”

“Y-yes,” she manages. “He… he sees my face now, when he thinks of… um…”

“When he thinks of her! That girl you’ve so thoroughly _replaced_. How does it _feel_ , erasing her from his every memory?”

“I…”

“Don’t look so _ashamed_. You don’t have feelings, remember?”

But of course Naminé has feelings. She knows this for certain because of how much easier it would be if she didn’t. Oh, how she _prays_ she could cut that all away too, just like her skin, just like her shadow of an existence.

In an instant—like a lightning-flash, of course it’s like a lightning-flash—Larxene is closer, _too close_ , one of her claws perfectly placed under Naminé’s chin. Close enough to cut into her throat.

“I _asked_ you what it _felt like_.”

“But I… don’t have feelings,” Naminé says, her voice even smaller than she expected. “You just said so yourself.”

Larxene smiles for half an instant, and then the claw presses in, right into the top of Naminé’s throat—

Blood, dripping onto her dress—

The claw eases. “You felt that, _right_?”

“Y-yes.”

“Then there must have been a feeling when you erased her. Some kind of experience. Like exercise, I wonder? Or was it like pulling things out one by one, like a little petal of a flower you just destroyed, _forever_?”

She has to answer. Doesn’t she? Or her blood will end up all over the floor, but it’s not like Larxene will even have the decency to kill her, she still _needs_ her—

A question, then. Does Naminé still fear pain?

In answer, she sets her jaw, presses her mouth shut.

Larxene’s face contorts into a scowl. Although her scowls look so like her smiles. So equivalently _sharp_.

And then she slaps Naminé across the room.

The world’s still spinning from her impact with the now slightly less perfectly white wall when Larxene pulls Naminé up by her hair. Someone who doesn’t exist shouldn’t have a scalp quite this _realistic,_ Naminé thinks—

“You want to try answering that again?”

But some pains are worse than others.

 _Better ribbons of flesh than a monster_ —

“No,” Naminé says.Then louder: “ _No_.”

Larxene’s eyes narrow, somehow sparkling more as they do. Like a sky full of stars, if each star wanted to electrocute you breathless.

“ _Well_ then,” Larxene says, smile widening, claws against Naminé’s chest even while her other hand _still_ holds her up by the hair, _why couldn’t this non-girl have at least un-existed a little taller_ —“How deep can I sink these before you _beg_ me to stop, I wonder?”

Naminé bites her tongue, knowing that whimpering will only make it worse. _But what if worse is better, what if there will be less of me for me to despise if—_

Larxene pushes Naminé back against the wall, by her hair, _oh_ her scalp—and then withdraws her arm but Naminé’s still pinned, why is she pinned—she glances to the side, at the massive sparking thorns that have grown from the wall. _Oh, of course_.

“It’ll hurt more if you struggle,” Larxene says, that same smile wide on her face. “Not that I _mind_.”

Naminé keeps her lips pressed shut, and braces herself.

And braces.

And… waits? Why isn’t Larxene doing it yet? Why isn’t she—

The smile on Larxene’s face tells Naminé exactly why.

She wants to watch her _squirm._

The fingers inch closer in a lightning motion—Naminé tenses—but no, it’s not yet, not yet. She closes her eyes, wondering if that will be better, but every half-second that passes has her tensing again, because maybe it’s this moment, maybe it’s this moment, maybe—

And then she feels it. The tips, just the tips of claws, like an itch. So much so that Naminé’s absolutely useless instincts, instincts that would make more sense if she was a person, have her trying to prevent her hands from swatting at the intrusion.

An intrusion that goes just so slightly deeper.

She opens her eyes. Looks right into Larxene’s. That woman’s intent face— _if she enjoys this so much, why didn’t_ she _just destroy Sora? Why did it have to be_ —

But of course Naminé knows why it had to be her.

Because only she could.

Only she ever—

 _Oh_ , the claws are going deeper now, and that does not feel like skin they’re sinking into anymore, that’s muscle— _searing_ pain, impossible pain—there’s a loud sound in the room, echoing across the ever-white walls, and of course that sound turns out to be Naminé’s scream—

But she won’t beg.

Maybe, just maybe, those claws will sink all the way into her heart and end her—

Oh, oh, just a little farther in and the world is narrowing to _pain_ , no, widening, the world is filled with so much more than it’s ever been before, it’s just that all the things in it are agony. Agony! How loud is she screaming? Why can’t she _stop_?

Why is Larxene’s smile… so strangely beautiful…

A howl, a screech, more types of scream than Naminé even have words for leave her mouth. And still she won’t beg. She _won’t_.Oh, _why_ did it have to be her—why did _she_ have to have the power—the one power the Organization needed—

Deeper, deeper, agony, agony—

Larxene’s smile turning into a twitching scowl as she doesn’t get the pleas she so clearly wants—

And then, all at once, a _current_ running right through—

Electricity hitting her, shock in every part of her body—as now she struggles, tries to get free, does anything but beg, her throat hurts from the screaming—

—the one power the Organization needed—

—the lightning courses through her and suddenly her screams are also _laughing_ , crazed, broken, she’s lost whatever not-really-a-mind she ever had, she’s _lost it_ , she’s nothing but blood and the floor doesn’t show a hint of white now and she’s just sparks throughout her bloodstream and it _hurts so much_ and she laughs—

— _Because she’s the one with all the power here_.


	2. The destruction of a heart, pt.2

How long, Naminé wonders, until the scars fade right back into the nothingness she is? How long until the endless _nothing_ of this castle erases all hint of blood, all trace of any past?

Nothing, nothing, nothing, if only she were truly nothing instead of _this_ , instead of—

She presses against the deep holes of her wounds and almost howls again. But that pain is better than other pains. Better than her thoughts.

She was the only one who ever had power to—

She presses, presses, pushing into the cuts with her own nails, wanting to open it all up further. _Please_ , she would almost speak, but it wouldn’t mean anything. At best, it would do nothing. At worst, any sounds of panic from her room might draw unwanted attention.

Sora’s still somewhere running in circles in the fake Hollow Bastion, she can feel him there like an echo of herself—except no, she’s the echo, not just any echo but an echo with fangs, draining him of everything that once made him himself.

He remembers almost nothing, now. Nothing _real_ , anyway. Only her, the perfect childhood friend smiling and collecting seashells and loving him, and it’s all a lie.

As if she’d be capable of love anyway.

And she—she presses her nails into herself, she knows where this thought is going, but she can’t _stop_ herself, there’s nothing to do but think in this empty room she’s not permitted to leave, think and destroy him, destroy him and think, on repeat forever—

She had the power.

She always could have stopped.

And _now_?

Now, it would take a year to put him together. At the least. And though she always had the power to _not do this_ —she had that power—she could have—

She catches her breath, wondering if making herself scream would be worth it if she could just stop this thought in its tracks.

But it won’t stop, just like she didn’t stop.

It’s too late.

The only power the Organization ever had over her was to hurt her, to kill her— _why did she ever fear that_ —and they would do just that if she started putting a single piece of Sora back together.

She would die, and he would still be broken.

Without even her as the rotting consolation prize.

So there it is. Her perfect white dress covered in blood. Her perfect white bed, perfect white walls, _white white white_ like the blank canvas she’s turned Sora into.

She digs further into her wounds, getting more than her nails in, the first joint of her finger inside of her, and she tries to rip the rest of her skin off.

_A scream like a girl on fire, a scream like destruction itself, like the oblivion she was always the one to cause—_

She should have expected the darkness to open up. Or maybe she did expect it. Maybe this was what she wanted after all.

At the very least, she has enough presence of mind to take her fingers _out_ of her gaping wounds before Larxene steps through the portal.

The woman scoffs, a sound of disgust. “What a mess. Your wounds _still_ haven’t healed, little witch?”

Naminé’s not sure what comes over her. Not sure why she chooses to sit up, so much blood dripping down her body, sticking her dress to her, coating her. Not sure why she chooses to meet Larxene’s eyes in something like defiance.

“They… they were very deep,” she says.

The implication: _it’s your fault_.

The truth: something entirely different.

Larxene rolls her eyes. “Then I guess we better fix it. _Sora_ wouldn’t want to see you like this. Unless you put something interesting in his memories that I don’t know about?”

“He- he wouldn’t.”

“Then we should get you sewed up, _hm_?” she smiles, drawing closer. “It’s a good thing I happen to have some string.”

But what conjures in Larxene’s hands isn’t exactly _string_. It’s electric wire.

Naminé would ask what she did to deserve this, but she knows exactly what.

She winces when the other woman’s hand comes closer, for once holding something worse than claws. Would closing her eyes give Larxene too much satisfaction? Or would that be keeping them open, widened with fear despite her best efforts—

Larxene digs the first stitch in. A twitch of numb yet searing pain. All throughout Naminé’s body—

Another stitch and metallic pain and the taste of blood in Naminé’s mouth as she’s trying so, so hard not to convulse—

But she does anyway, the twitches digging her into the metal of the wire that stabs endless electricity though her. She forces her eyes open, a crack, but all that’s waiting for her is Larxene’s grin, and is that a peal of laughter she can hear through her screams?

 _Stop it, stop it, end it, end it._ But it won’t end, and it can’t, because she has always been the monster in this castle.

She has always been, and she rides the pulse of pain, because at least it’s something other than her not-even-self, her cloying nothingness.

And then, before she’s even ready, it’s over—no new stabs, only electricity running through her like a second never-ending heartbeat. It _hurts_ , hurts enough that all she can do is lie down—even if Larxene is there, even if Larxene is _right there_ —but at least she _can_ lie down, that’s how little it hurts.

How little.

She’d cry, if that wouldn’t just draw Larxene closer, like a moth to fire—no, like fire to a moth.

She lies down on her own, blood-soaked bed, and Larxene sits down next to her. And Naminé knows exactly why the woman is still here, why she isn’t going elsewhere. Because Naminé’s pain is far, far more interesting to this clawed menace than anything else in this empty castle.

“Good, stay there,” Larxene’s saying, feigning a disinterest Naminé knows she doesn’t feel. “You wouldn’t want to rip out those stitches, now would you?”

Her small mouth rises into a smirk that feels just like the lightning itself.

“Don’t have anything to say? Oh well. I think I’ll just stick around here and make sure you don’t _hurt_ yourself.”

 _It hurts, it hurts_ —oh, good, Larxene’s pulled out a book. Leaving Naminé to nothing but her torment—well, except for the fact that she can _see_ how often Larxene steals a glance, obviously more pleased by Naminé’s pained face than whatever’s in that de Sade book.

Her breaths coming ragged—

Lightning eternal—

That smirk, that perfect mouth—

And Naminé finds she has something to say.

“What… do you want?” Of course as soon as the words are out of Naminé’s mouth, Larxene’s face twists into disgust and dripping disapproval, but she’s not done. “With your plan, I mean. With _Sora_.”

“Oh, you want me to _spare_ the boy the harm _you’ve_ already done?”

 _Yes, yes, of course I do, kill me, kill the monster_ —Naminé shakes her head. “I just want to know why.”

She expects Larxene to laugh at her. She expects her to dodge the question, to call her names. What she does not expect is Larxene’s clawed hand on her skin, caressing her arm as it and everything else is wracked with agony.

“Cute,” she says with a smirk that could ruin the world.

“Tell me,” Naminé almost whispers, pleading. It doesn’t matter. None of it _matters_ , she has ripped apart the only person she’s ever met who doesn’t deserve it—but maybe—

“Technically, we’re doing this ‘cause our _leader_ wants it. If he has Sora, he can take Kingdom Hearts, restore all us Nobodies’ little hearts, blah blah blah. And we _listen_ to our leader.”

Her smile tells Naminé instantly that that isn’t true at all.

That Larxene, at least…

Suddenly her hand is tight around Naminé’s arm, squeezing her even as electricity courses through every inch of her. “But tell me, Naminé. Do _you_ want a heart? Do you want to be real? _After everything you’ve done_?”

She doesn’t respond, she can’t respond, this innocent girl in a blood-covered dress, because of _course_ she wants what’s right—

“That’s what I thought. Of course you don’t.”

 _She’s good, she’s good_ , she’s the victim, the waif in the castle waiting to be rescued, except no, _she’s the one who forced Sora to believe that_ , she’s always been the monster—

Finally, Naminé does what she told herself she’d never do.

She starts crying.

The tears touching electrified skin, beginning to burn her—

But Larxene asks her one more question.

“What would you do, _to prevent that from happening_?”

_Nothing! She wouldn’t do anything! She’d—_

Oh, who is she kidding?

“Anything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so everything gets even worse :)))


	3. The destruction of a heart, pt.3

To not feel. To not feel.

That is what Naminé wishes, scribbling with crayon as if it could block her memory out the same way it helped channel her abilities to create memory in Sora. But her powers have never worked on herself. Only on Sora, and those connected to him… of which she isn’t one, because she does not exist.

She has never existed…

Her wounds are healed, fast as is the way of bodies that aren’t real. The room is perfect white again. The loss of memory this castle has provided has always been nothing other than her doing, but the way it retains its pristine foreboding despite all that happens within… nothing anyone has done has stopped that.

As if it’s a gravestone. A monument. Unchanging, unable to change. _Just like memory isn’t_.

_Do not think, Naminé. Do not feel. Fall into the nothing…_

Her eyes open to the sound of opening darkness, as they so often have lately. Darkness she cannot enter, for she does not have the cloaks to protect herself from it.

She almost laughs, now. What could darkness do to her that she has not done already?

She turns her head, from white wall to white wall, expecting to see Larxene as she so often does.

Instead, standing there like an endless matchstick, is Axel.

He steps forward. She shrinks, but does not flinch. Unlike Larxene, he does not torture, does not dig into her skin at all, and at least not as far into her mind. But then, even she has heard the rumors. Larxene and Marluxia muttering to each other in the next room— _he finally did it—killed one of us—burned him to a crisp…_

For a long moment in which Naminé feels very small, Axel seems to simply watch her. And then he says: “You’re all that he’s got left.”

She doesn’t have to ask who _he_ is.

“So then,” Axel continues, “if you don’t stop this, no one will.”

Naminé wants to shrink back even further, blend completely with her chair.“But I…” she starts, wanting to bite down her own words, but also wanting to make him _see_. “It’s too late.”

She can’t stop it. Not now. Not with the time it would take.

She’d die first—

“You shouldn’t give up just yet,” Axel says. He looks at her, strangely sly, as if he has something up his dark sleeves. “Say, Naminé?”

She almost looks at him. Almost. The white walls, closing in…

“Have you noticed?” Axel asks, as if _he_ hasn’t noticed how she’s not responding to him. “Marluxia doesn’t seem to be around.”

Naminé would blink, if she weren’t so uncontrollably staring into the distance, into nothing at all. “What… are you saying?”

“Just that there’s no one here who would want to get in your way.”

Get in her way if… _what_? If she started re-linking Sora’s memories, right now—which would put him into a coma, with Larxene at least still around, not to mention the Riku Replica who really might just kill him? If she told him that she was a lie, thus causing even more pain than she already had?

And what’s _Axel’s_ goal here? Getting a heart? Strange that he would want it; he’s been part of this too. Part of destroying someone. Who would want a heart after that?

“It’s too late,” she repeats. “It’s just too late.”

Axel steps back, throws up his arms. “Come _on,_ Naminé! You don’t have to think like that.”

 _So he does have a goal here_. He’s playing a game with lives as the bargaining pieces, just like all of them.

Maybe he’s hoping she’ll die, that Marluxia will kill her… because she’s so much of Marluxia’s real power. Which means he’s plotting against Marluxia, right? The pieces fit together like links on a chain, like lines on paper.

Before she can convince herself not to, she stands up.

“Just like you don’t think like that?” she asks, voice just as small as always. A tiny girl, at the center of one boy’s apocalypse. “You’re out of the box. You always have been, right? You don’t let assumptions… stop you… from burning a man alive.”

Surprisingly, Axel’s widened eyes last for only the smallest fraction of a second before his face shifts into a smile. “Not _alive_ , Naminé. I thought you understood that.”

“I do now.”

“So, what is this, then?” Axel gestures widely, begins to pace around the room. “Trying to challenge me? You don’t even have a weapon, got it m—“

Naminé shakes her head. “Why would I need one? Are you going to fight me? Don’t you think things might end badly for you, if something happened to me? Marluxia and Larxene coming down on you at the same time…”

Now Axel shakes his head. “You really don’t want to save the boy, Naminé?”

 _You don’t understand me at all. You don’t know how long it would take_. “Sometimes… sometimes wanting something, doesn’t mean anything at all. Sometimes it’s fake, empty. Just like this castle. Just like memories. Just like me.”

This time, Axel’s face truly falls.

“Just… don’t get yourself killed out there, okay? Showtime’s coming.”

He opens a portal with one hand, and is gone before Naminé manages to whisper, “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So now the canon divergence has really, truly happened.
> 
> [Axel voice, "is this a bird" meme] Is this an excuse to use my catchphrase?


	4. The destruction of a heart, pt.4

Showtime it is, and Naminé knows the part she has to play.

_She does not want this. She wants anything but this, the calcification of the end of a boy who never deserved it—_

But it is just as she said to Axel. It _is_ too late.

And maybe at least this way he’ll be happy. Content. Even if heart-deep in a lie without end.

She’s standing in the hallway, just where Sora will exit the Destiny Islands. Marluxia’s nearby, not in sight just yet, he’s already told her what he’s going to say, reminded her not to mess it up.

But how could she, at this point?

 _Now, he will be mine_ , Marluxia told her last night, if there really are nights in this place. _He will do anything for you. All you need to do is tell him._

Naminé didn’t say what she was thinking. That he will be hers, not Marluxia’s.

 _Better than dead, better than aware of all he’s lost_.

She hears his footsteps before he arrives. Closes her eyes, takes a breath before the plunge. She is the monster, she is what rips him into shreds—

“Naminé!” he exclaims, coming just into view, _him, him, really him_ , jumping the last step with too-innocent eyes, too-sincere eyes, he believes with every last thought that she is his everything because she has made herself so—

“…Sora,” she says. Demure. Her not-heart and not-stomach twisting beneath her perfect skin. “It’s really you.”

“Naminé,” he says again, voice softening, before he rushes to hug her, taking her into his arms, his _real_ arms so unlike hers. “I can’t believe it. After everything…”

“You really came.”

“Of course I came. I may have forgotten a lot in this place, but I never forgot you.”

“I… I’m so glad.”

And part of her is. Part of her really is. He’s here, someone who loves her, someone real who she can hold and someone who she destroyed every last shard of—

She can’t help it. She laughs, a tiny peal at the absurdity and horror of it all.

“What is it, Naminé?”

“I’m just so glad. So glad…”

That’s a cue. A footstep, then another, and Marluxia coming down the stairs—

“Marluxia!” Sora shouts, letting Naminé out of his arms and jumping in front of her, Keyblade already out. “You—“

But Naminé jumps now, her in front of him. _Her role to play_. “Sora, no! Marluxia, he’s—just listen to him.”

A chain of lies, tied tight around Sora’s neck. Tightening even further, now.

“…Yes,” Marluxia says. “Sora, I… apologize. Naminé’s imprisonment here, though at my hands, was never something I wanted. I was… forced into it.”

He’s not the best liar, hardly very charismatic. Naminé clenches, knowing that this could all crash down, leaving Sora with even less than before—

“Why should I believe you!” he shouts.

But Naminé has a perfect answer to _that_ question. “Because I do.”

Immediately, Sora’s Keyblade lowers, though he doesn’t unsummon it just yet.“…Really? You’re… sure? I won’t let anyone hurt you, not ever—“

“He won’t,” she says. “He always treated me kindly. And told me… how someone more powerful than him would kill him if he didn’t. Someone more powerful than him… but not more powerful than _you_.”

Sora nods. “Whoever it is, I won’t forgive him for what he did to Naminé.”

“Then… will you let me help you track him down?” Marluxia asks. “I worked with him for a long while. Against my will, of course.”

 _There’s no way Sora can believe this. There’s no way_ … but he nods again. “If it’s what Naminé wants, I’ll do it.”

She swallows. It’s… it’s exactly like Marluxia had hoped. Like Larxene had hoped. And if she had just stopped it sooner…

Too late now. Far too late.

She’s steeling herself against what she has done when another voice echoes down the stairway. The voice of someone who had _not_ been planned to be here.

“Naminé!” the Riku Replica shouts.

Naminé closes her eyes, knowing that this can go nowhere good, Marluxia turning to face the replica, Sora already summoning his Keyblade. _So quick to draw it, so quick to fight,_ did Naminé cause that, was he more balanced before she—

Of course he was.

The Riku Replica rushes toward Naminé, but Sora is faster, getting between them. “Let me through!” the replica yells.

“No!” Sora yells back.

“Naminé!” the replica says, looking at her. “Don’t listen to him! His memory is a train wreck. It wasn’t _him_ who promised to protect you! It was me!”

This time, Naminé restrains her laugh, _it was none of you, it was none of you, this is all a lie_ , she remembers that moment when she ripped the replica apart, destroying all of his just-forming memories and identity, she remembers his scream—

She has reduced both of them to this, to caring only about her—

“Riku…” Marluxia starts, a warning tone in his voice.

“Why are you even here!” the replica shouts. “And Naminé, why do you look _okay_ with this! He’s right here, the person who’s been keeping you away from me! And what a laughable hero Sora is, if he won’t even fight him—“

“No, Marluxia is…” Naminé starts.

But the replica cuts her off with a guttural scream. Rushing forward, swinging his weapon at Sora, swinging wildly—

Sora parries, but Naminé doesn’t _want_ this, Naminé doesn’t want any of this—it’s so horrible already— _how dare_ the replica make this worse— _how dare he_ , when she created what he is now—

“STOP IT!” she shouts.

And the replica stops.

Completely.

He falls to the ground.

Unblinking.

Of course Sora is the first one to speak.“…Riku? Riku!” He turns to Naminé, perhaps this is the moment he realizes the monster she is— “what happened? What did you…”

 _Think fast._ She has to think fast, she—she killed him—she reached into the heart she already controlled and she shattered it—“I…”

“What she did is—“ Marluxia starts.

 _No_. She has to be the one to come up with an answer. She has to be the one to control this. “I tried… I tried to save him.” The most false narrative she can imagine. But Sora will believe her. “I tried to cleanse the darkness from his heart… I _did_ … but there wasn’t anything left, Sora.” She meets his eyes, growing more confident with every word. “There was only darkness there, and so…”

“…Riku,” Sora repeats. “I’m so sorry.”

“…I am too,” Naminé says. _Maybe the last true thing she’ll ever say_ —but then, how can someone who doesn’t exist have any truth at all?

“Wait, Naminé,” Sora says. “You can… you can do that? Make darkness… go away?”

“Only sometimes,” she says. “And apparently… sometimes… it doesn’t…” she looks at the replica, real guilt in her voice. Everything around her a ruin she herself has created. The monster in the center of the web.

“It’s okay, Naminé,” Sora says. “At least I found you.”

“Sora…”

And here, at her complete dominion over a boy who was never meant to remember her, a portal opens.

“Oh, what’s _this_?” Larxene asks.

Ready to play her part. Not yet knowing how much Marluxia’s plan has already changed. How much…

Naminé meets her eyes, glances at Marluxia; the plan, the plan was for him to ‘capture’ Larxene, to pretend she’s a prisoner—Marluxia working with Sora and Naminé openly, Larxene in the shadows—

 _But Naminé has a better idea now_.

So she smiles, stepping toward Larxene. Saying her name.

“Naminé!” Sora shouts.

“What did I just tell you, Sora?” _She will ‘cleanse’ this woman. She will be in control—_

“Na—“ Larxene starts.

“ _Shh_ ,” Naminé says, finger to her lips. She glances to Marluxia just enough to hopefully signal: go along with this. We have a new plan.

_‘We’, not ‘you’, I am not your tool, I was the power all along—_

“Larxene, come back to the light, let the darkness leave you—“

She steps closer, the confusion in Larxene’s eyes almost disguising the torturous instinct beneath them.

And she _grabs_ the collar of Larxene’s cloak, the highest thing on the woman she can reach, pulls her down, whispers to her—“I killed the replica. I told Sora it was because I could cleanse darkness. _Play along_.”

And the strangest thing happens.

Larxene smiles.

 _Perhaps at the game of it all_ —and then she twitches, ‘trying’ to move back from Naminé, shouting, “Ah! ah!”—

“There,” Naminé says, turning to Sora. “It’s done. She’s in the light now.”

Sora tilts his head. “She… she had more light, than Riku?”

“Riku fell _very_ far.”

And there Naminé stands, Marluxia nearby and impassive, pretending to have been kind all along, Sora all hers, Sora’s eyes filled with innocent fake love, Larxene on the ground, catching her breath as if all darkness really had left her, Naminé in the center, the center of the web, she can make sure Sora won’t hurt more than he has to, this is the best she can do now, the best she can manage—

And that’s when a shield flies into the room. Specifically, into Marluxia.

“Sora!” Donald and Goofy yell as one.

Marluxia clutches his head, about to say something—

“Donald! Goofy!” Sora says. “Do you—do you believe me now? See, it’s her! She’s right here!”

“Um, Sora…” Goofy covers his mouth in concern. “Isn’t that Marluxia behind you?”

“Yes, but it’s all okay! He was just forced to capture Naminé, and she can—she can heal people of their darkness! Isn’t that amazing?”

Donald looks skeptical. “Sora, I’m not sure…” He looks around, his duck eyes finally landing on Larxene. “And _her_?”

“Naminé took the darkness out of her! Isn’t that right, Naminé?”

“Y-yes,” she says.

But she can already tell that won’t convince Donald, won’t convince Goofy. The suspicion is too strong in them. She could reach out, try to change something in their memories—but no, no, it doesn’t work _that_ quickly, unless she wanted to simply shatter their hearts, but no, their hearts aren’t anywhere near under her control enough for that, _and that’s not what she wants anyway_ , she needs to remember what she wants—

“Sora, I think something’s not right here,” Goofy says.

“What do you mean? Don’t you believe me now? Don’t you _believe me_?”

Donald looks down, where a body that never lived now lies. “Is that… Riku…”

“Yes, there was too much darkness in him, but it’s fine now, it’s fine, me and Naminé are together—“

Goofy gasps. “But you care so much about Riku.”

“Is he…” Donald starts.

“Yeah, he’s gone—“

“Sora!” Donald shouts. “How can you say that?”

“He was your best friend, a-hyuk,” Goofy adds.

“He let the darkness take him,” Sora says, _disdain_ in his voice, or no, is that disgust, in none of his memories real or created has he ever expressed disgust like that—“and are you two letting the darkness take you too?”

All at once, Naminé knows exactly where this moment leads.

The path she has already set Sora down, crystalizing before her eyes.

Larxene’s watching with sparkling eyes, probably only just managing not to burst into laughter, because _here it is_ —

Sora swinging his Keyblade at Donald and Goofy.

“Sora—!”

 _If you don’t stop this_ , Axel’s voice echoes in Naminé’s head, _no one will_. The voice changing to her own, her tiny girlish pitiful voice, _If I don’t stop it_ —

But how could she?

All she could do right now… would be to do to Sora what she did to the replica—

— _or perhaps I could try to heal his heart, reforge the chain, make him fall asleep_ —but no, no, that can’t be fast enough, not with Donald holding up his staff in self-defense—

—fire rushing toward Sora—

—Sora taking it without a hint of damage—

—and on his face isn’t so much rage but _clarity_ —she can feel it in his heart—all he has is her—all he has ever had, so far as he knows, is her—she is his world—

_If you don’t stop this…_

Sora swinging at Goofy, again, again—

 _No one will_.

Naminé looks down at her hands as the blows ring out. Her hands, perfectly clean. Even though she knows blood should be dripping down them, the light of hearts she has near as pulled out and destroyed.

If she doesn’t—

—but she—

—she can’t—

—Sora is already broken and she can’t unbreak him she can’t do that she can’t kill him that’s the one thing she can’t do _this is all how she has painted it, her scene of destruction, her masterpiece_ —

“GOOFY!” Donald yells.

And she knows exactly what has happened.

And mere moments later… Donald’s yells stop.

Sora unsummons his Keyblade and walks to Naminé. And in his eyes… in his eyes… is he even there? Is his heart there at all? No, it must be, there’s sadness there— _does he understand what he has done_ —

“Didn’t you try to cleanse them, Naminé?” he asks.

There’s only one way she can respond. “I did. But the darkness was too much. I wasn’t strong enough. Sorry.”

“Oh… don’t feel bad, Naminé,” he says, his eyes bright with the only thing he has left, the only thing, there is _nothing else inside of him_ —he hugs her—“You did your best.”

And in a strange, terrible way, he’s exactly right.

Her most masterful construction.

“Let’s go… get you some rest,” she manages. “I’m sure Marluxia and Larxene can prepare a room for you.”

Because she’s all he has left.

Because he’s killed two of the people he loved most.

And the one thing she cannot do—the one thing she can never do—is let him understand just what he’s done. This boy, this innocent boy—at least if she keeps him, he can keep on smiling—

She is the monster. She is the monster. She is the monster.

And there isn’t a stain anywhere on her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I asked my girlfriend if the "a-hyuk" was too much, she replied that it was "already too late by the time I wrote the word 'Goofy'". But that's just the Kingdom Hearts way!


	5. The destruction of a heart, postlude

Sora’s finally asleep in his room, oh the _relief_ , the incredible relief, Naminé finally doesn’t have to talk to him and see his perfectly happy face in the wake of _this_ —

Shutting the door to her own room, Naminé finally lets a tear escape her eye.

What is left? What is left? Is anything left? Her hands pure, even the wound below her throat long-healed, for to be a nobody is to always approach _nothing_ , is for every hurt to fade—

Darkness opening.

Naminé almost laughs. Of course.

“Larxene,” she says, not letting the woman start the conversation, not _letting_ —

“Are you satisfied, little witch?” Larxene asks, smile on her face, stepping forward.

She doesn’t have a heart, she doesn’t have a heart, she should just toss it all aside—

“…At least he’s happy,” Naminé says. The truth. Why is she speaking the _truth_ to _this_ woman? “He doesn’t know. He doesn’t understand… and he never will.”

Larxene lets out a laugh now, her full giggle, cruel, cruel, so _cruel_. “And here I thought you wanted to be _oh so good_.”

“Why are you here?” Naminé asks, failing to keep the exhaustion from her voice. “Just to hurt me? Go ahead.”She bares her neck. _Hurt me kill me destroy me_ —

“Oh, I just might.”

She steps forward, _clack clack clack_ , her boots on the floor, Naminé tilting her neck back, not caring anymore, not caring. _Or caring too much—if she could just rip it all out, this feeling from a heart she doesn’t have—_

Larxene places her kunai on Naminé’s neck, gently. Oh so gently. If she wanted to, just the tiniest bit of pressure— _she could split her neck open_ —

Somehow, tears begin to leak from Naminé’s hollow eyes.

“ _Oh_?” the torturous woman asks. “Are you _scared_ after all?”

Naminé answers by pressing her own neck into Larxene’s kunai.

And the next moment is a blur. All a blur. Pain—blood rushing from her—gasping— _how hard did she push_ —did she want to die—of course she did—but how can someone who _does not exist_ die—a blur—on the floor, is she on the floor—

“What’s _wrong_ with you? Are you _stupid_ , stabbing yourself like that—“

Larxene, scoffing—but holding her—

 _Why would you touch me? I’m even more monstrous than you_.

“You empty-brained—don’t you know we _need_ you—“

Despite the blood flowing out of her, _the blood flowing out of her neck that Larxene is pressing, the wound Larxene is holding closed_ , Naminé laughs. Coughing up blood. “You see? I’m the real… power… here…”

Larxene growls, gestures with her other hand—a small hole of darkness opening—she shouts into it. “MARLUXIA! THROW ME A POTION! _NOW!_ ”

Blood throughout her mouth, her eyelids fluttering closed, all Naminé can do is keep on laughing. She’s made another monster care for her. She’s made a storm take her in her arms. She’s so… _important_ …

Her vision goes black.

—

Unfortunately, Naminé’s neck is no longer throbbing when she awakes. _Unfortunate?_ Yes, of course unfortunate, why is she still here—

“ _Good_ , you’re alive,” Larxene hisses. “ _Idiot_.” The other woman looks at her, looks right at her, her eyes so sharp, so _angry_. “Are you _suicidal_?”

Weakly, Naminé laughs again. “Yes.”

All at once, the color drains from Larxene’s face. The other woman sits on the side of Naminé’s stained bed with a _thump_.“…Oh.”Then she seems to shake herself. “Don’t you know what it’ll do to _Sora_ if you die?”

Naminé winces. It’ll destroy him, just as surely as his own death would. _But still less than if he knew. Than if he knew what I’d made him do_ …

Larxene answers her wince with a laugh, almost sounding like her normal self. “This is why we _don’t_ have hearts, Naminé.”

“…It’s not helping,” Naminé says. She may not have a heart but something else is beating in her chest, destroying her with every breath—

Again Larxene surprises her, this time by taking Naminé’s hand in her own.“There’s no _point_ in watching the pain you cause if it _hurts_ you.Stupid.”

But Larxene made her _start_ —or Marluxia did—they seemed the same, at that time—she was a haze of confusion, surrounded by endless white rooms—

“I don’t know what to do,” she says.

“Torture someone until it feels better? Someone you actually hate.”

Naminé laughs again, weakly. “I don’t know who I hate. I don’t know… how any of this started.”

“In _my_ opinion,” Larxene starts, “Xemnas would be a good start. That jerk.”

“I… I’ll have to think about that. I… need time.” She gives Larxene what she hopes is a meaningful look. _Just let me rest—_

“Yeah, _right_ ,” Larxene scoffs. “As if I’m going to leave _you_ alone. You’d just try to off yourself. No, I think I’m staying _right here_.”

Naminé turns away from Larxene, hoping she can at least pretend the woman isn’t here—at least close her eyes and find some kind of oblivion—but how can she _sleep_ in these bloody sheets—how can she stop her thoughts—

“What… what are we going to tell Sora?” she asks. “About why I’m… hurt…”

“Well, that’s the fun part, isn’t it? You get to choose _any scapegoat you want_. So you better think _real hard_ about who you want to kill.”

_Myself. Myself. Maybe you. Myself…_

She clutches the sheet in her tiny hand, as if that’ll help. As if she can sleep… just sleep…

Moments pass, then minutes, the other woman’s weight still pressing on the bed.

The lights even dim, and she still… she’s still awake here…

“Larxene?” she finally asks, what seems like an hour later.

“Hmmm?”

“I… can’t sleep. Could you… could you hurt me? Just… a little…”

Larxene laughs, a sound bright in the dark of the room. “Little witch, you’re a _wreck_.”

 _I know. I know. I know_.

“…but I guess a little electricity wouldn’t damage you _too_ badly.” Naminé can almost hear Larxene’s smile.“So, in that case…”

All at once, the stabbing pain of electrocution fills her.

The pain… the agony… such a sweet companion, she rides it, lets her lids flutter down into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Naminé is a very functioning person, as you can see,


	6. The path, paved

Step one, to the end of things—

Naminé in her room, Naminé in the white hallways she has claimed, her place, empty like she is, draining away all else as she does—

— _all else except those fading scars she keeps collecting, those kunai dug into her skin—_

—Naminé avoiding Sora, by telling him what he needs to do, sending him to Marluxia to train so he can take down Xemnas, _the one who hurt her, of course he’s the one who hurt her, why wouldn’t he be_?

And somewhere beneath, Riku’s ascending through the castle. _She has not fully claimed it_ —Zexion still in the shadows—

So she whispers to Riku what he must do. _Let in the darkness_.

She assumes it will one day destroy him, keep him away from Sora.

She is wrong.

* * *

Step two, to the end of things—

Riku is ascending, _Riku is ascending_ , and she is driving her claws into his heart, ripping out memories, hoping she will manage in time.

He walks up stair after stair, and Axel challenges him, and she whispers in his heart a thousand times how important it is that he defeats him, that he eliminates this enemy against him and Sora and her, and her, and her—

“I’m finding Sora!” Riku yells as he throws a final blow against Axel. Darkness opening, as Axel slips away, just barely—

“I’m finding Sora,” Riku repeats, catching his breath. “And, and…”

_Me, not Kairi. Me, you care for me—_

“Naminé,” Riku says to herself, and she is so certain she has him.

* * *

Step three, to the end of things—

The castle cleared, she reads through Vexen’s every last record, the thousand plans he was enacting for his Superior.

_Roxas—Xion—_

They would siphon Sora’s power. They never wanted him to be hers—only gone. But they didn’t just underestimate Marluxia, they underestimated _her_ —

—she doesn’t _exist_ —

—some part of her still wants to cry, she is such a monster, but she knows no other way to be, at least she can play this role on her own terms.

_I can make something better for them than death—something better for me than death—_

Larxene won’t leave the room as Naminé reads, she will not leave. They both know why but they will not _say_ it, what does Naminé feel, what does she _feel_ , she feels nothing she is _nothing_ —

“I won’t let Xemnas win,” she says.

Larxene laughs. “This should be fun.”

* * *

Step four, to the end of things—

She is managing Riku, she is _managing_ him, she has sent Sora out on his first mission, to find the Organization’s presence, she will instruct him in his heart, she will tell him when to make a move—

_Soon, soon, he will likely eliminate one of the weaker members—one at a time—_

But she can feel the hearts connected to Sora, all of them, and that means someone far away with a terrible strain of hope that threatens to fill her up from the inside. A desire to be real, to live, to _exist_ —

“ _Roxas_ ,” she hisses under her breath, pressing newly bloodied hand to her wall. He wants, he wants, he _wants_ —

—doesn’t he know, he’s better off without a heart?

He feels. He _feels_ , and she is a monster bleeding and broken and it sickens her—he is sickening her.

She must remove him. She must destroy him utterly.

After all, it’s what she’s good at.

* * *

Step five, to the end of things—

She is smiling when her plan unfolds inside her mind, a perfect flower, a perfect way to _rip off every last petal_ —

Emptiness, emptiness, _she is nothing_ —

Her smile feels ragged on her lips, her dress a perfect white, every wound she has ever suffered gone, she is _perfect_ , she is _nothing_ —

She will eliminate all that may threaten her.

The Organization would use Xion—would draw in Sora’s power to the one she can touch less—but Xion is far from beyond her reach—as long as she is in reach of _Roxas_ —

She still remembers Donald and Goofy’s dying screams.

_This will destroy Roxas utterly_.

* * *

Step six, to the end of things—

She is smiling so sweetly, greeting Sora back, absolutely perfect and pure and unstained, Sora grinning every time she praises him—

All while she’s hardly paying attention to him, instead sowing confusion in Roxas’ heart—

Not inserting herself, no, no, just _changing_ the memories of Xion, making her seem _unnatural_ , adding events where she tried to separate Axel and Roxas— _she’s so manipulative, isn’t she, Roxas?_

_You’ll believe it, when you remember she was just a monster made by Xemnas all along_.

* * *

Step seven, to the end of things—

Larxene is laughing, Marluxia is sipping tea, Naminé is scribbling out the destruction she intends to bring forth through Roxas’ own hands.

“I can’t believe _our Sora_ has already taken down Xaldin and Luxord,” Larxene says. “I’d have expected Demyx too, by now, but maybe he’s just a little _too good_ at shirking his duties.”

“Typical,” Marluxia says.

But Naminé needs not listen further, Naminé is floating within her art, finding the chains of Roxas’ every memory, twisting here, crushing there, breaking and reshaping the memories, all of him coming right apart in her hands—

_You asked me how it felt once, Larxene, doing this. I understand now—it feels amazing. It feels like power_.

She closes her eyes, and she breaks him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, did you think it couldn't get worse? :)


	7. The death of light

Axel’s side still _hurts_.

Nobodies heal fast, but what he’s been through—that fight with that _boy_ who wore darkness like a friend, who _knew_ it, who would need no cloak to move safely through the dark passages—

It’s a miracle he’s alive. If ‘alive’ is what he’s been for these past several years.

 _But isn’t it worth it,_ some part of him whispers _, to see Roxas’ face again?_

But something is wrong there, too. He can sense it. Something distant about the look in his eyes, quickly followed by something sharp. Something—wanting? Fearing? But of course it can’t be either, nobodies don’t _feel_.

Just like he isn’t feeling right now. It’s too funny to even laugh.

He’s been put back on missions with hardly any time to recover; maybe Saïx really _does_ want him gone. Maybe every single person sent to Castle Oblivion was supposed to _disappear_. But Marluxia and Larxene didn’t, now did they? They still hold Sora, and the only concession to Axel’s injuries is that he hasn’t been sent back there yet to challenge them.

“You know them,” Xemnas said. “You were there when it happened. Once you are able and no later, you will lead a… team there.”

But of course that team can’t include Roxas. For too many reasons to name. He’s back only to leave again. Likely to die.All for… all for that distant possibility of regaining a heart…

He still can’t laugh when he’s summoned to the meeting room, sitting on his ridiculous chair. He can’t cry, either—those marks under his eyes remind him of that every day.

He certainly doesn’t expect Xemnas to say, “Something very serious is happening, which interferes with our plans.”

“This about the traitors?” Axel asks.

“It’s not _just_ about the traitors,” Xigbar butts in. “As if! Frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t noticed.”

“It’s… closer to you than the rest of us,” Saïx says. That pause, that bitterness—

“…Roxas,” Axel realizes. “Something’s happening with Roxas.”

“Bingo!” Xigbar says. “Someone’s messing around with our little Number Thirteen.”

“Specifically, his memories,” Saïx says. “Those who have gone on missions with him… have reported incongruities. Confusion.”

“He doesn’t even know if he’s been somewhere before or not!” Xigbar says, gesturing with a gun. “Remind you of anything?”

Axel has to admit that it does. It reminds him of something very specific… his long days at Castle Oblivion…

“…They’re still using Naminé, aren’t they?” he says. “And because Roxas is Sora’s nobody—“

“They can get to us here,” Xemnas says. “This must be stopped.”

“So we’ll send a team,” Axel says. “Just like you suggested—we can storm C.O. and then—“

Saïx shakes his head so definitively that it silences Axel, leaving a moment with no sound anywhere in the room. “He is a liability.”

_No. No—_

“Well, that’s what we have Poppet for, right?” Xigbar says.

Axel sits up straighter. “She would never—!”

“I will handle that,” Xemnas says in a voice that seems to quiet to ring in the room the way it does. “We can… convince her.”

“Vexen had plans for a device…” Saïx says.

“Plans that are in Castle Oblivion, _right?_ ” Axel asks.

“Plans he left here,” Saïx says.

 _This can’t be happening_.

“At least you’ll still have Poppet, eh?”

* * *

The instant he can leave the meeting, Axel teleports to Roxas’ room.

 _Not there._ He’s not there, he’s not there—was he sent on a mission today?—Saïx would never tell Axel now—

Twilight Town. He’ll check the bell tower—and if not there, maybe he’s on a mission somewhere in town—

 _Roxas. Roxas. Oh, Roxas_.

But the bell tower is empty, strangely silent in the sunset.The streets, then—Axel rushes to them—down one alley, then another—he’ll check other worlds if he has to— _he has to find Roxas_ , and to hell with everything else.

When he hears the metallic clang of a Keyblade against _something_ , he smiles.

But when he gets closer—when he realizes the sound is metal against metal—well, his heart would sink if he had a heart, wouldn’t it?

He runs faster, each step a jump forward, his feet off the ground more often than on—

—and—

—the scream rings out at the moment he sees Roxas. A Keyblade, right through a heart—right through what isn’t a heart. A girl, shouting out, _fading at the edges_ —

“ROXAS!” He yells. “What are you _doing_?”

“She—she wasn’t _real_ , Axel,” Roxas is saying, Roxas over Xion’s _disintegrating body_ , his friend, his _friend_ , “she was just a fake, trying to get me to betray you—“

To betray… him.

_So that’s what they had Naminé do to him—that’s the lever they pulled—_

“Roxas, no—“

But with a broken breath, Xion’s already gone.

And Roxas, compromised, lost, shattered Roxas, will be gone too, if Xemnas has his way.

“Roxas, I—“

 _If you do this_ , Axel’s own voice rings out in his head, _it’ll be turning your back on everything. If you do this, they’ll hunt you down, Isa and the rest, all of it for nothing_.

But no—not for nothing.

For nobody. For _a_ nobody.

For Roxas.

“Roxas, you’re not safe here. And you’re not safe with the Organization, not anymore.Come with me.I’ll… I’ll figure something out.”

* * *

_…R…_

* * *

… _Rox…as…_

* * *

_Roxas…_

* * *

He’s been… having these weird thoughts lately.

Roxas sits up from his bed with a groan, disorientation, the usual headache.

Like… is any of this for real, or not?

He blinks, the room dark in the city, in the city that never was—right under the noses of… of… of _those people_. The ones he can’t remember, the ones who are hunting him.

He can hardly remember anything at all, these days.

“Roxas,” Axel says, coming in like he always does. Like… always? How long has it been? Where did Roxas… where did he _start_ … “Roxas, do you know who I am?”

“Yeah. You’re Axel. You’re… my friend.”

Axel breathes a sigh of relief. “Good.”

Roxas’s head… it’s pounding. He moves his hand toward his head—there’s words on it—he’s seen these words before, hasn’t he? _I’m Roxas. Someone is manipulating my memory. I can trust Axel._

He wants to cry. He wants… to exist… wait, doesn’t he exist? _Nobody_ , a word flashes in his head, but it’s so distant—there’s a _girl_ in his head, in a white dress—he misses her, he thinks—

“Axel?” he asks. “Are we going to find her? The girl?”

Axel gives him a long, long look. “What does the girl look like?”

“Light… hair?”

Axel shakes his head. “No, we’re not going to find that girl. That’s one of the fake memories. Oh, Roxas…”

“I… I know. Or… I think I know.” But what does he know? What can he know? Is Axel—what if he can’t actually trust him—

“I’m going to keep you safe,” Axel says. “Got it memorized?”

Roxas almost laughs, but can’t. Almost cries, but can’t. Because of course he doesn’t have it memorized. He doesn’t have anything… at all… ****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, non-Naminé POVs appear! They're doing fine too, as you can see :)))


	8. The birth of shadow

_Who is he_?

That is the question in him, the call of his being—touching each inch of his skin the way twilight does. A cloth against his eyes; he’s tried removing it, looking at his strange, confused companions, but something about the light sears too much, the darkness calls too much, it overwhelms him. What he needs is the middle ground—the soft shadow—

“Why am I here?” he asks them. His brief glimpses of the world around him seem filled with neon light in puddles—endless and yet meaningless light—as if the light itself never was—

He can’t see them, he chooses not to, but he smells their uncertainty— _smells_ it, how strange and yet how clear to him.

It is the smaller one who answers, the one who smells like reflected light. “Um… you… you fought us, actually.”

“Roxas!” the other one admonishes.

 _So the one of fire didn’t want me to know I was their enemy. And this Roxas…_ “Do you know why I fought you?”

“No, but maybe—Axel, do you think, like what’s on my hand—“

The fiery one, Axel, sighs. “Yeah, it’s a possibility.Look, the people who are after us—they have access to someone who can manipulate memories.Although… not just _any_ memories.”

“What?” Roxas asks. “You never told _me_ that—“

“Maybe I did, you just don’t remember it. Anyway, you _were_ someone she could reach. Someone closely connected to where her powers come from. But… now that you don’t remember anything at all… maybe you’re not anymore.”

“And what does that mean for me?”

“It means you might not be our enemy, kid.”

 _Kid_? He doesn’t feel like a kid. He feels like… like someone who should have a weight attached to him, filled with decisions of dragging down—but instead he doesn’t, he’s empty. He remembers nothing. Not even his…

“Do you know… what my name was?”

There’s a pause; he smells at the air, this world around him empty somehow in the same way he is. _This_ world—one of many, he knows, somehow.

“It’s probably best if you choose a new one yourself,” Axel says. “Got it memorized?”

* * *

He plays with the blindfold on his face, seeing and then not seeing. Learning the faces of his companions and then accepting himself back into the twilight that seems to fit against his skin.

If nothing else, it helps him think, this darkness not cast by any light. In here, behind the cloth, he feels—not whole, there is still that emptiness deep inside, an emptiness sewn beneath his skin. But he feels… like a melody heard from far away. Like there is _something_ , a string that connects everything he thinks and feels and experiences.

 _Feels like himself_ , he would say, but he doesn’t know who that is.

But yet… doesn’t he?

Under here in this twilight… under here in this shadow… a soft darkness that knows him, and he it, in a space beyond memory.

He tilts his head, as if trying to hear the melody clearer.

“ _Shadow_ ,” he says.

“Hm?” Roxas asks.

“That’s… my name,” he says. “Shadow. Or, it is now.”

“Alright, I’ve got it memorized,” Axel says.

As they walk toward a door in a building that’s supposedly safe, Shadow smiles for the first time.

* * *

Days pass without sun or even the movement of stars, Shadow learning what he can do, practicing with that strange sword of his—

He wheels around, pointing it at the person who had snuck behind him.

“Whoah!” Roxas says. “I just came over to tell you… that part of me wants to kill you.”

“The memory manipulator,” Shadow says, understanding immediately.

“Yeah. You honestly look like someone I should hate— _really_ hate—and…”

“…And that tells us something about their goals,” Axel finishes, coming into the room. “I think you’re a threat to them, Shadow.”

“And do you know what they _want_?” Shadow asks.

“Before you showed up, I thought their main goal was to take down the rest of the Organization—that’s me and Roxas, sort of, and Xemnas, Xigbar, Demyx… Saïx. But if they’d rather aim Roxas at you than any of them… I don’t know.”

“You say _they_ , but there’s only one memory manipulator, right?”

“Yeah, but my guess is Marluxia and Larxene—former Organization members—are the ones using her.” A strange stillness; Shadow smells a chill falling over Axel’s fire. “Unless… unless she’s calling the shots.”

“And what does she want?”

“I have no idea.”

* * *

Shadow takes to standing atop rooftops, smelling the movements of the air. There _are_ four others in this world, just as Axel said… and they are growing concerned. Desperate.

A storm. A storm is coming.

 _And can I really believe Axel? Can I believe all he’s said?_ The man moves like he might be hiding something… but Roxas does not.

And Roxas clearly is being manipulated by something. Something sneaking into his memory… and it doesn’t smell a thing like Axel.

Roxas, who smells like reflected light, so close to familiar—though nothing is truly familiar to Shadow—and yet everything that is in twilight is, in his mind he walks endless steps on twilight roads—he feels that he knows so much, even while knowing so little—

He nods to himself. He _will_ take a stand against this memory manipulator. He has decided.

But first, while the Organization prepares its move—while the storm builds—he will train. He will rebuild himself, sword-strike by sword-strike, spell by spell.

When the battle comes to him, he will be ready

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok look. Look. Can you really look me in the eye and tell me Riku *wouldn't* choose the most edgelord possible name if he forgot his original one. Can you really make that argument. You can't.


	9. The life left behind

_They got away_. First Roxas, and now _Riku,_ of all people Riku, who she had wrapped her desires so closely around.

Naminé digs her nails into her palms, and tries not to scream.

At least Sora’s still hers.Sora’s still…

 _Is this what you wanted?_ something inside her whispers. _Did you ever want them corrupted, controlled, dying—_ but there was never another option, was there? Be the knife, or be its wielder. If she must be either a tool or a monster of course she will be the monster, she will be the one deciding whose neck to split open and how—

Darkness opens like she wants someone’s skin to, and Larxene steps through.

Something comes over Naminé; she screams. Grabs the nearest object and throws it at the woman.

“ _Really_?” Larxene halfway laughs. “A pencil? You can’t do any better than that?”

All Naminé has, is dissolving in rage; all Naminé has, is falling away from her hands.

“ _I_ can do better than that,” Larxene says. Stepping closer. Heels on the floor, kunai in her hands. Naminé looks into her eyes, no fear left in her.

“Do it,” she says, and gives herself over to the only feeling she doesn’t hate.

* * *

If Larxene could feel fear, perhaps she’d be frightened by the look in the little witch’s eyes. A person with nothing else to lose. A person with so little to gain.

A person who screams so sweetly under her kunai.

She scratches them down Naminé’s perfect skin, tearing the dress off of her in shreds of blood. _Yes, yes. Give me what little is underneath. The flesh you have instead of a heart_.

She pushes in, under Naminé’s small breast, toward the heart that’s never been there, the heart Naminé will never, ever have, the heart that isn’t worth it. Electricity coursing down the blades, Naminé _screaming_ —

Larxene giggles, amusement filling her. Not joy; she can’t feel that. Not love, but if she _could_ feel love…

If she could, it wouldn’t be worth it.

Not even with her blades deep in skin, not even with blood running down this girl’s skin, pooling on the white floor. Blood conducting lightning, sparks arcing through the girl and through the room.

 _It wouldn’t be worth it_ … a heart comes with the wrong kind of pain.

Pain on the inside. Pain not expressed as blood.

She drives her kunai deeper, deeper, _deeper_ , and there is no heart there at all.

* * *

Naminé struggles—she struggles with consciousness—oh, the _pain_ —

 _No,_ her own voice whispers to herself. _I don’t want to stay awake. I don’t want to feel anything but this. I don’t want to remember and I don’t want to think and I don’t want to FEEL—_

But then why does she feel a heartbeat?

Not in her chest—if it was there, it would have stopped, metal raking through where it should be—but in someone else’s. Someone on an island. A girl _pure_ and _loving_ and _abandoned_ and yet never once ripped apart—

Someone she can spare.

Maybe the only person she can spare, from all of this.

Even as she crests the waves of pain, she reaches into the girl Kairi’s heart and undoes every memory that leads back to Sora, leads back to Riku, might lead back to _her_.

* * *

The island breeze carries a hint of something other than salt. A hint of… pain? Of blood?

Kairi tilts her head. She was thinking about something. What was she… thinking about? And why does the breeze feel… why does something in her feel… so wrong?

 _She was thinking about someone_ —not her parents, not Selphie, not Wakka, not Tidus. She puts a hand to her lips, trying to _think_.

The waves lap against the shore, but somewhere in her and somewhere else she feels like her _skin_ is being ripped apart.

Somewhere… else.

She imagines white halls, white rooms—

But that doesn’t look like anywhere she’s ever been. The place in her imagination… the scent that’s not on the wind at all.

She falls to the sand, blinking, confused as if waking from a dream. A dream she can’t… put into words…

She tilts her head again, looking at the setting sun. Color after color staining the sky…

Maybe she should find some paints.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're not okay, try doing S/M about it!


	10. The stage of life and death, pt.1

Demyx is _so_ not cut out for this.

Just about everyone at the Organization’s died, or left, except for the really bossy ones—and him. Maybe he should have left, too, but it’s never seemed like the right time. It’s a lot of effort to walk away from a group that might try to kill you if you do!

But it’s also a lot of effort to scout Castle Oblivion when that castle’s _also_ filled with people who want to kill you.

“How did I get myself into this…” he mutters, but not even his sitar answers.

The good thing is—all he has to do is scout. Pinpoint which floor and wing Marluxia and his group is in. Report back… and hopefully not have to do anything else.

He won’t have to do anything else, right?

* * *

“Are you sure we can trust _Demyx_ to find anything?” Xigbar asks.

Saïx narrows his eyes. “Trust is one thing. But as to whether we can risk him… of course he can.”

“What you’re saying is, he’s expendable.”

“I am.”

Xemnas leans back on absolutely nothing at all, here on this endless grass around Castle Oblivion, and almost manages a wistful smile. “It does not matter. Let us wait to see what unfolds.”

* * *

“They’re here,” Marluxia whispers, and Naminé clenches a fist.

“How do you know?” Larxene asks.

“Because they sent Demyx in, and I could recognize his style of muttering anywhere.”

Naminé smiles, even as neither of her… companions… speak any of the obvious questions. Questions she has an answer to. “So we lead him right where we want him. Let him see only what we want him to see.”

“Set up a trap, in other words.”

“Of course.”

After all, Naminé is the monster, the spider in the web. She knows all about traps. “We select the room,” she says, “and then after he sees it, we will prepare it. With everything we have.”

“You mean…” Larxene starts.

Namine nods, smiling. “Sora’s memories. We can make this castle a very, very dangerous place.”

* * *

Demyx moves slower once he hears voices. Makes his footsteps as _quiet_ as possible. Not the right guy, he’s not the right guy—it takes everything he has to prevent himself from a nervous mutter.

But—he hears voices.

And he’s on the sixth floor… after taking a left turn…

It’s a little strange; he’d have expected them to be higher up. _But whatever_ , he thinks, _I did my job_.

And maybe, if he’s really, _really_ lucky, in the battle that follows, he’ll find a way to escape in the chaos and never deal with any of this again.

* * *

A mere hour later Saïx walks through the halls that should have been his, his and Xemnas’, not the location of some mutiny. A cruel smile settles on his face. This time, he is going to end it.

And then the hallway is no longer a hallway.

It is the edge of a castle covered in sharp railings ready to stab—and yet under a beating, horrendous desert sun—and yet _dripping_ something down its walls, something that smells like acid.

“What…?”

Someone laughs. Claps. Walks forward.

“Welcome to our little playground, Saïx! I’m sure you’ll _love_ it here.”

Larxene smiles, and the walls begin to move toward him, begin to close him in.

* * *

Xigbar is already so very done with this.

Lauri— _Marluxia_ and Larxene are trying to surprise him, to trap him, to get him off-guard—but if he’s transported into a maelstrom of every world that Sora’s visited, what does he care?

He brandishes his guns with no hesitation to shoot.

* * *

“Strange,” Xemnas mutters in the twisted paths of Wonderland, twisted paths yet tossed underwater, currents battering him.“Strange,” he mutters, and almost admits something to himself—almost admits that this plan of his former subordinates has creativity. Style. Promise.

But he will crush them. Of that, there is no question.

* * *

As the players take their places on a twisting stage, no one notices a single light slip through the castle doors. No one notices a mouse with a face of rage, seeking vengeance for his new friend even as he has yet to learn that his oldest friends of all have also fallen.

“ _They’ll pay for this_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mouse with a face of rage.


	11. The stage of life and death, pt.2

Marluxia smiles as he hears Saïx scream in the next room over. Monstro’s stomach acids have proven the best environmental weapon in the arsenal that is Sora’s memories.

And the best weapon overall, of course, is Sora himself.

It is all exactly as Marluxia had planned, and he leans back, _exults_ in it—except that it is not, not exactly.

For he knows he is not entirely the one in charge.

Can he take Naminé down a notch? Can he wrest control back from her, when this is over?

In that other room, Sora is already rushing at Saïx, Saïx who will be granted no moon at all under the desert sun of Agrabah.

Sora _will_ win that fight.

A door, opening. A man imperious, even with soggy hair.

“ _Marluxia_ ,” Xemnas says.

In a burst of flower petals, his scythe appears in his hand.This fight, too, will go his way. He is sure of it.

* * *

“You—will—not—hurt—Naminé!”

The kid has spirit, Xigbar has to admit that. But spirit isn’t enough if you can’t keep up with your opponents dodging. Okay, okay, teleportation, really, but what’s the fun in little details like that?

He parries, jumps, parries, teleports, shoots. Is Saïx already dead? It seems likely.

But just because this isn’t what he predicted doesn’t mean he can’t work with it.

* * *

Marluxia clutches his scythe, gasping.Xemnas’ lasers… Xemnas’ lasers coming at him from every direction… already, he is lacking the strength to block them…

“Larxene…” he whispers. If she were here… if she were here, she could finish Xemnas off… he’s certain of it… he _believes_ in her…

 _Where is she_?

* * *

“I can’t believe _you_ thought you could get away. You little _coward_.”

Okay, okay, maybe Demyx can’t deny _that_ —maybe he is a coward, but so what? Even if he’s not exactly the best at getting things done, does she really need to—

His train of thought disintegrates as another burst of electricity runs through him.“Why, Larxene? Wh…why…”

She laughs. It’s the worst sound he’s ever heard.“Don’t you _get_ it? This is what I’m _here_ for! This is what I _like_ to do!”

He braces himself for the next wave, but it doesn’t help.

Nothing helps at all.

* * *

Xemnas lets a smile—a remnant of an emotion he can’t quite recall—settle on his face. Marluxia is fading, breaking apart into flower petals as nothingness itself takes what little was ever left of him.

He has won, he has killed the head of this insurrection—

“ _You_!” a tiny voice shouts behind him.

He turns, only to see… a mouse. A mouse with narrowed, hateful eyes… and a Keyblade.

“You didn’t just kill Riku! You killed… you… you _killed_ Donald and Goofy! My friends!”

Before Xemnas can say anything, a light bursts from the mouse’s Keyblade, stabbing him as sure as the blade itself could.So it’s another battle, then. It’s a good thing he is so good at battling.

He summons his weapons, and prepares to kill a mouse.

* * *

The unfortunate thing about torturing _weaklings_ is that they eventually run out of blood.

Demyx’s corpse begins to disappear under Larxene’s feet; she scoffs at it. Now, she should probably help with some of the others, shouldn’t she?Maybe give Marluxia some backup…

She licks the blood from her hands, and opens a portal.

* * *

“H- _how_?” Xemnas gasps.“A… _mouse_ …”

“You hurt my friends!” the mouse shouts, driving his blade forward, and Xemnas knows no more.

* * *

Mickey catches his breath. Vengeance… he has made his vengeance… but he still feels hollow inside. He’s lost so many now. He failed Aqua… then Riku… now Donald and Goofy?

_And what have they done to Sora?_

Mickey leans on his keyblade, letting the tears fall from his eyes. He has so few left, now. So few…

“Oh, who’s _this_?” a woman’s voice asks.“And… WHAT DID YOU DO TO MARLUXIA!”

Mickey blinks. He’s tired… he’s so tired…

And there’s flying blades in the air, entering his skin. The pain… what cares he about the pain? He dodges the next set, the next… forms a ray of light…

But oh, how tired he is.How tired….

“You will suffer for this,” the woman proclaims.

* * *

It’s only hours later that Larxene finally finishes. _Good thing Naminé’s dealing with Sora. No way I could pretend at his stupid earnestness now_.

Her best friend is _gone_. Her… her Marluxia…

And now not even the mangled, broken mouse has anything left to give.

She bites her lip. Maybe she’ll visit Naminé tonight. Maybe that’ll help.

She is so very glad that she does not have a heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Torturing mice for fun and revenge :)


	12. The last thing ripped apart

How can a life ever be normal, when you know you were once someone else? How can a life ever seem _right_ , when you’ve been told it isn’t a life at all, that you are a non-existence without a heart?

And yet Roxas and Axel seem to have hearts, as Shadow would define the term.

So he will trust that he has such as well, even if… even if he did die.

He is dead. He is _dead_ and _not whoever he was_ —he had a name and it is gone, a past and it is gone, a reason and it is gone, and yet he still feels real.

How can that be? How can any of it be?

Someone punches his shoulder lightly. He smiles, his _friend_ —he blinks, under his blindfold. This isn’t some old, nostalgic friend, this is Roxas, who the old him tried to kill.

 _But he still is my friend_.

“You in there, Shadow?” Roxas asks.

“I was… thinking.”

“You’re always thinking,” Roxas complains. “But I can’t do that. Not when my memories are all messed up. I’m bored, Shadow.”

“Do you suggest a solution to this?” Shadow asks, a hint of a smile on his mouth.

“Uh… ice cream? Or… there isn’t ice cream here, is there?”

“There isn’t.”

Shadow doesn’t need to take his blindfold off to guess that Roxas is pouting. “When’ll Axel get back…”

“Whenever he gets back.”

Silence passes, probably punctuated by more pouts. Shadow admits to himself that some ice cream _would_ be nice… but beggars can’t be choosers, and they are very much hiding from people who want to kill them.

For some reason. It would be useful, Shadow assumes, if he could remember _why_.

_But then, Roxas’ memories are their own vulnerability. Is that why I lost my memory when I became a nobody? Was I… protecting myself?_

“Hey, Shadow?”

“Hm?”

“I’m sorry if I’ve asked this before, but… why do you still wear that blindfold?”

Shadow smiles, the twilight inside him answering to the call of the shadow he named himself for, the shadow against his eyes. How could he explain it? How could he explain anything at all, when he knows nothing and yet seems to know?

“It’s how I know who I am,” he eventually says.

“Oh. I think… I think I understand that.”

Just then, the familiar deep dark scent of a dark passage fills the room. So deep, so _desiring_ of Shadow, wanting to pull him in… until it closes and Shadow becomes more aware of the sound of Axel’s ragged breaths, the vague scent of bile in his throat.

“Axel!” Roxas shouts. “What _happened_?”

“They’re…” Axel starts, interrupting himself with a cough. He smells—he smells like _terror_. “They’re all… gone. They’re all… except for Larxene, and for… _her_ … the rest are all…”

“All… _gone_?” Roxas asks. Shadow doesn’t know what Roxas remembers in this second, but at least in theory… in theory, Roxas knew all of these people.

“Every… last… one of them.” Axel says.“Got it memorized?”

“So that includes Marluxia,” Shadow says, following along. “So… he wasn’t behind this, then. Not like you’d thought.”

“You’re… probably not wrong.”

“So then, who is it?” Roxas asks. “Larxene? Or the… the memory manipulator herself?”

“I don’t know,” Axel says. “But I do know we have to find a way to stop them. Because… there’s no way they aren’t going to come after us next.”

“And how do you suggest we do that?” Shadow asks.

* * *

“NO!” Shadow’s shouting later, not for the first time. “That’s a _dangerous_ mission, Axel. And you’re _not_ going to do it by yourself.”

“It’s my decision to make, if I want to risk—“

“And I can choose to risk myself too!”

“But if _you_ go,” Axel says, “who’s going to be here to watch over Roxas? To make sure…”

“We can _bring him with us_.”

“But what if… what if Naminé…”

“She can reach him _anywhere_ , Axel. It’s no worse if he comes with us than it’s always been—“

“But what if we get separated?” Axel asks, fear dripping from his words. “What if… what if he can’t find his way back, and then…”

“He’s your teammate,” Shadow says. “Your partner. Treat him like it.”

“But—“

Shadow shakes his head. “If you really want to make sure he can’t get lost, there are ways to do that. I’m sure you have access to some rope?”

* * *

Shadow lets Axel be the one to do the tying; seems an intimate thing, to him. When the two of them emerge from the bedroom, he tilts down his blindfold and takes a peek: Roxas is harnessed around his chest; the rope connects to Axel’s waist. This might mean, Shadow realizes, that if Roxas runs off, it’ll be Axel who is dragged along… but then Roxas will still not be alone, so it will be alright.

“Are we ready?” Shadow asks, placing his blindfold back where it belongs.

“Yeah,” Axel says. “Let me do the honors.”

Darkness opens, a sweet and cloying smell, and Shadow steps through.

When he emerges on the other side, the darkness behind him still draws him, but he gently rebuffs it. And what is around him…

What is around him smells like nothing at all.

“This place…” he starts.

“Don’t remember anything,” Axel admonishes. “We don’t want her hooks in anyone else.”

“Of course.” He had not been remembering, though, not really, only… noticing. A place that does not feel like a place. The only thing to smell at all being scents of power, other people’s power.

The people they are trying to avoid, today.

“Lead the way,” he says to Axel.

* * *

Deep they go, down stairs that always open into rooms that smell just the same. Endless. Shadow can see how it would be easy to get lost here; but Roxas is not lost, walking close to Axel.

And Shadow… Shadow whom the darkness touches as insistently as the light… Shadow who holds twilight in front of his eyes… he will not be lost either.

How many hours has it been, when Axel finally makes an announcement? “We’re here.”

This room has less light to claw at Shadow, and almost another scent, like metal—and yet it too, seems most of all like nothingness.

“This is my old colleague’s lab,” Axel says. “Or it was, before I killed him—“

“You killed—?” Roxas starts, shocked—

“I mean, disposed of? Anyway, let me take a look around. Shadow, if you get that blindfold off, you could help sort through documents too.”

He is not lost, he is not lost—he does not want to become so—but this is important, and each passing second is another chance for them to be caught. “Fine.”

At first the light blinds him, and then the dark—but the middle ground is in his heart. He will trust that.

Though, isn’t he supposed to not have a heart?

He shrugs to himself, and begins to sift through piles of paper. Many of them contain names that claw at something in him— _Sora, Riku_ —but now is not the time to try to understand why. Now is the time to look only for references to _Naminé_ , the name of the memory manipulator who threatens Roxas even now.

“Oh, this is interesting—“ Axel starts.

And there’s the smallest sound of a footstep and a smell of broken light, and Shadow immediately turns around to face the person who against all their hopes has entered the room.

Spiky hair—wide and yet strangely hateful eyes—Keyblade—and that light, that _light_ —

Before the light can destroy him, Shadow puts his blindfold back on and summons his own weapon. “We have company.”

“…Oh,” Axel says.“ _Oh_.Well, I think we have what we need, so let’s get out—“

“I won’t let you!” the Keyblade wielder shouts, and even that seems sharp, piercing like light itself, attempting to break Shadow’s very skin. “You’re here to—you’re here to—to hurt _Naminé_!”

Axel sighs.“Well, in that case…”

Shadow hears the metallic sound of Axel’s just-summoned chakram, then Roxas’ Keyblades.

Three against one. They should be able to handle this—

The broken-light boy swings at Shadow suddenly, wildly, one swing and then another and then a burst of thunder and then dodging and then _throwing_ his Keyblade and then—

Shadow parries—

Roxas behind him, swinging his own blades—

A parry, another parry—

Chakram flying through the room.

Instinct takes over, and Shadow dodges a thousand blows, a thousand thousand, managing as many of his own as he can, trying to take down this crazed boy, this crazed and broken boy, he can’t have started this way, what has Naminé done to him, who _was_ he?

Could he be saved—

Another swing and then a shout of “FREEZE”, a high-level blizzard spell flying at Roxas and knocking him across the room. Shadow steps in, not letting this boy come closer to Roxas while he’s down.

Maybe this boy _could_ be saved, but at the cost of Roxas, Axel, Shadow himself?

He parries, swings, parries, dodges. Something hurts but it’s not a wound—a tear is escaping from his blindfolded eye—why is he so _sad_ —

“I won’t let you hurt her, Riku!”

He steps back. _Riku_? Was that—

—no, no time for surprise, no time for thinking when this boy is so strong—

He reels _forward_ instead of back, pushing his blade toward the boy.

Pushing his blade… through the boy.

“Riku…”

His name. His old name. It must be. And this boy—he certainly knew this boy—

“Riku… _why_?”

He can _smell_ the boy fade away, broken light evaporating into nothing at all.

The boy—he’s—he’s— _gone_ —that doesn’t feel right—nothing here feels right at all—nothing here— _the darkness reaches toward Shadow, wanting him back—_

“Shadow?” Roxas asks.

“Not now,” Axel says. “We need to _go_. Right. Now.”

And through gritted teeth, Shadow manages to hold onto himself through the dark passages that bring him home.

Barely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :))))))


	13. The last thing kept together

The waves beat against the shore. Kairi sits on a bent tree, finding tears once again falling from her face. Why? Why is she so sad, these days? Nothing has happened. Nothing at all has happened. Perhaps she isn’t as close as she could be to her friends—Selphie, Tidus, Wakka—but isn’t that normal? Teenagers growing apart from each other happens all the time. But then why is she so _sad_ —

She hears a strange sound, not quite like a breaking wave. She turns around—

A faint twist of—of _smoke_? No, it seems darker than smoke—no, it’s gone now—no, what’s important is the person standing in front of that not-smoke.

She jumps. “H-how did you get here!”

“Calm down, calm down,” the person says. He’s… _tall_ , maybe taller than anyone she’s ever met. Bright red hair in spikes, and the weirdest, longest black coat she’s ever seen.

“Why would I? Who even _are_ you?”

The man scratches his head. “Uh…”

Kairi crosses her arms, fixes him with a glare.

“Well, to be honest, I’m here to kidnap you.”

Kairi blinks.That’s a strange thing to say. A stranger thing to admit, if it’s true. He takes a step closer, another. Warily watching her. _Is she going to run_? She can tell that’s what she’s thinking.

But… she’s not. She sighs. “I guess that makes as much sense as anything, these days.”

She’s been… having these weird thoughts lately…

“I have to admit,” the man says, “that’s not what I thought you’d say.”

“Tell me, stranger,” Kairi says, not looking at him, looking only at the sea, _letting_ him sneak up on her, why would she even care, “am I forgetting something? Is there something… I’m supposed to remember?”

His footsteps come closer, but he doesn’t grab her. Doesn’t lay a hand on her. Yet. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, there is.”

She blinks back tears, looks to him. “What is it, then?”

“It’s… a boy named Sora. And a boy named Riku.”

 _Sora. Riku._ Those names jar something in her, enough that she staggers with it, steps back—almost right off the small island with the tree, almost falling off the cliff, but the strange red-haired man grabs her, helps her to her feet.

“Sora. Riku,” she says. “They were… my friends, weren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“What… what happened to them… and to me?”

The man sighs. “It’s a long story. And I’m not sure you’d believe me.”

But nothing seems for real. Nothing at all.

“Try me,” she says.

* * *

Kairi laughs when Axel’s done. What else can she do, in the face of something like this? “So I’ve seen other worlds,” she says. “I’ve had my heart leave my chest.”

“Yes.”

“And when my heart… wasn’t in me… it created something. A monster who killed my friends.”

“Killed one, who in part revive, and then killed the other who no longer recognized him in something like self-defense, yes.”

“Why… are you telling me this?”

“Because you’re the only thing that can stop this now.”

“But it didn’t have to be willingly,” she reasons. “You said you were here to kidnap me. That was completely true, wasn’t it? You didn’t have to tell me anything.”

Axel sighs. “No, I didn’t.”

* * *

—But he’s so glad he did.

He’s glad that one person in this whole mess won’t have to be _used_ , completely and utterly. Though maybe even that’s just sugarcoating. What he’ll have to do to Kairi… he doesn’t know how much of her will survive it.

But his own diary speaks of a girl.

A girl called… Xion… who even with repeated reads, he can barely remember.

A girl he can almost feel like he’s meeting again, talking to Kairi.

He wants to reach out—but no, no, he doesn’t _know_ her—

 _If she does survive this,_ he promises himself. _If she does… I’ll do everything I can_.

“So here’s what we’re… you’re… going to have to do,” he starts.

* * *

“Take the monster back inside myself,” Kairi summarizes. “Put what killed my friends and ripped them from my mind back inside me.”

“Yes.”

She smiles bitterly. “And try not to be destroyed from the inside.”

“…Yes.”

It’s a burden, heavier than any she can remember. But then, isn’t that the problem? That she can’t remember? She takes a shaky breath. She’s not sure she’s really being granted a choice, but if she is, the mere fact that she has a choice means she doesn’t. Her head spins.

“You said… Riku’s still alive.”

Axel rubs his head. “Sort of. He’s… a nobody, like me. A type of being without a heart.”

Kairi gives him a long, level look.

“…Or so I was told,” Axel adds. “By someone I can’t really trust.” He laughs. “Funny, that.” He returns her expression almost exactly. “But he doesn’t remember you.”

“That’s fine,” she says with a laugh. “I don’t remember him either.”

“So…”

“So I’ll do it. Of course I’ll do it.” How could she live with herself, knowing what her inaction would continue to unleash on the worlds? This never would have been a choice at all. 

She faces the sea, taking it in one last time. If she ever sees this place again, will she really be the same person?

“So… take me wherever you need me, Axel.”

 _To what might well be my death_.


	14. The last of all

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> :)))). Just the epilogue left guys!

He’s… he was… he was in a gentle space of light… and now—

— _ripped out, ripped out, blood flowing back through his body his broken body, what has happened, where did his nice bed of light go what is WRONG—_

Ventus opens his eyes.

 _He shouldn’t be here_. He knows that clear as day. In fact there is no daylight here, only white walls—this is not where he should be—

_He is not ready to exist again—_

_Where are Aqua and Terra—_

He grasps his chair with a staggering breath. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be here. But he can’t just will himself back into sleep.

The Keyblade comes easier to his hands than standing does to his feet. Why did he awake? Why, when he still feels so broken inside?

He braces himself and slowly manages to stand.

Maybe… maybe somewhere he will find an answer. Somewhere in this… this _place_ , a place with endlessness he can already sense.

Down the hallways, he walks.

* * *

He’s gone. He’s really gone.

Sora is… gone.

The only one she could… the only one who… who looked at her and didn’t see a monster… _because she made him not see_ …

And he’s gone, slain by one who once truly loved him but now remembers nothing of him, _also her fault, also her fault_ , she _felt_ Riku’s memory fade away from him in desperate defense against her claws—

She balls her hands into fists, focusing on the pressure, focusing on the pressure—

Larxene, standing close, suddenly screams, yells, lashes out with what seems like a thousand strikes at a wall.

 _She feels nothing. She doesn’t have a heart. She feels nothing_ —

Another anguished scream escapes Larxene’s throat, raw as ravaged skin. Maybe Naminé will offer herself up for just that—maybe that will heal them both—

_Something without a heart can’t heal._

Larxene breaks the wall, screams again, punches her hand against the rubble.

 _Something without a heart can’t feel_.

Naminé presses her nails into her skin until it begins to bleed, dripping onto the white ground.

 _Something without a heart can’t hurt, can’t hurt, can’t hurt_ —

“MARLUXIA!” Larxene screams into the air, into nothing at all. “How—how _could_ you—how _dare_ you die—“

And Naminé would step forward, she would say—if there was anything to say—she would ask—if there was anything to ask—

There isn’t even revenge left to take.

Xemnas is just as dead as Marluxia. They’re all dead—except that _Riku_ , him and Axel and Roxas—yes, she can kill them all—

But that won’t help Larxene’s ragged screams.

Only her own.

_Screams she doesn’t have. No heart to feel it—no heart to shout it—_

She collapses to her knees.

And Larxene—Larxene finally looks at her. And her face… changes. Not softens, no, almost sharpens, but yet—yet it seems like some kind of pain dies down—

 _But they can’t feel pain, they can’t feel pain_.

Larxene lets an arm go slack. Is it calm? Is it peace? She walks to Naminé and says, “I could carve you.”

“I know.”

“I could sear you. I could mangle you. I could tear you apart.” A sadness enters her eyes. “But little witch, I have to ask. Would you die from it? Would you dare die?”

Naminé meets her gaze and hisses, “ _I would not_.”

Larxene smirks for the first time in days. “In that case.” 

And she closes in, her kunai preparing for blood. For a type of destruction. They do not feel, they will never feel, but _this_ —this they will experience—and know the only pain worth seeking—here among blood not yet absorbed by the white—the blood of so many—the weapons left behind when bodies that never were faded back into nothing—the single somebody mouse’s mangled remains—

Naminé closes her eyes, ready for a rapture, but she does not expect the interruption that follows.

“You killed him.” A voice distant and pained—and yet strangely like Roxas’. “Mickey… my friend… you… _who are you_?”

Naminé staggers to her feet, turning to look at this newcomer as Larxene does. He looks so much like Roxas—though only one Keyblade forms in his hands…

“We’re, we’re not the ones who…“ Naminé begins to bluff.

Not-Roxas shakes his head. “I know darkness when I see it. And you’re even more filled with it than that woman next to you.”

He steps closer—to _her,_ not to Larxene—

But Larxene steps between them. “ _No,_ ” she says, and takes the first swing.

* * *

Ventus fights. Just like always, he fights. Light against dark. He is a weapon, just as he has always been. Split apart and forged into pure light.

He wishes—he wishes it were different—

But how could he react differently? When his friend—one of his so few friends—is dead before him—

— _and where are Aqua and Terra_ —

He would cry, but it seems that his tears have left him. And all that’s left is the emptiness of an avenging light without anyone to fight for.

A wave of electricity pulses over him, again and again, and he swings forth that Keyblade, jumps into the sky and back down, moves fast enough to keep up with the lightning itself.

And he deals a final blow.

* * *

Larxene falls. She—falls—

Naminé can’t comprehend it. Just minutes ago—an endless whirlwind of lightning—she’d stepped in front of Naminé, she’d—how can she watch this, her thoughts are fading from her, her thoughts are moving nowhere, _how can Larxene be cast down_ —

“ _How..?_ ” Larxene herself gasps out as this not-Roxas watches.

Naminé… can’t… think… can’t comprehend… but she’s moving… already she’s moving, not even understanding what she’s doing…

She doesn’t… she can’t look… she can’t watch the twists of smoke and darkness as Larxene, _Larxene_ , disintegrates…

_Bodies and blood and weapons discarded on the floor—_

How dare this not-Roxas… how dare he—

 _I’m broken, broken, just a broken girl_ —

She’s behind the not-Roxas now… she leans down… she picks up Marluxia’s scythe, the only thing left of him the only thing, the very only thing, just like Larxene’s kunai will be all that’s left of her—

She says nothing. No quip, no battle cry to alert.

She simply… steps. Closer. One step, another. Steps to him.

And slashes the scythe across his body, cutting him in two as if he were a stalk of wheat.

 _How dare he,_ she’s thinking. And, _Larxene_ —but the woman’s already gone. Kunai clattering to the ground. Nothing left… nothing left at all…

She drops the scythe and falls to her knees.Blood finally on her hands. Blood… finally… her own hands…

 _Nothing left… there is nothing left at all_ …

How much… time… is passing? She can’t think… hours… days… the eternity of the end of the world itself and there is blood on her hands… finally, finally, blood on her hands… she laughs weakly.

“Oh _Naminé_ ,” a voice says, taunting, but not taunting enough to break through a single numb inch of her bloodstained skin. “I have something for you.”

And she can almost feel—feel someone here she has never felt so close—someone who carries the ocean in her heart—

—and all at once she is dragged back she is dragged by hands and by a force impossible to resist she is pushed and she is pulled directly into into into—

—And in the next second, she has no eyes to open.No body to move.Only light surrounds her, endless light… she can taste it in her bitter not-heart…

And it’s Kairi who turns to Axel and says, “…I’m still here. I can feel her, but I’m still here.”

And Axel smiles as if a war has ended, _it has ended, it has ended, Naminé is trapped here, she is screaming—_

“Good,” he says.

And Naminé screams and shouts and _hurts_ and—

* * *

—and Kairi _feels_ the bitterness in her. The hate and the destruction, under her skin itself. A muscle tenses, but she breathes. Breathes.

 _She is still Kairi_. That feels right, and yet—yet suddenly it seems that there was once a light effortlessness to all her life. One that she only understands now in retrospect, now that she feels heavier and more ragged than she ever has.

But she is herself, and she remembers the sea, and she will _not_ hurt another even if she can almost hear the thing inside her telling her to do just that.

“Well, let’s get out of here,” Axel says.

She nods. “Yes. I want to… meet him. The boy I don’t remember. Riku.”

She steps through Axel’s portal of darkness, suddenly better understanding that darkness itself. It is no longer impossible for her to imagine. No longer so distant to her touch.

Perhaps she is frightened—perhaps she should be—but this is her burden. Her choice.

And she will bear it.


	15. Epilogue

Someone draws a breath.

Time—what has time been—time does not pass when one is nothing—when one is becoming _something_ —she is and she was and—

She feels at her chest. Oh. Oh no. Inside, there is a heart and it is beating.

“Elrena,” a familiar voice says, and oh how she had almost forgotten that name—she turns to him, this person sitting on a rock above her, on this dark and endless shore. _Lauriam_. “You’re awake.”

“It—it’s _back_ ,” she gasps. “Why is it back?” And she remembers—she remembers all too much—the loss and the killing and the _killing_ —guilt catching up to her like a wave—“ _Why do I have a heart?_ ”

He shrugs, and the sadness in his eyes is so unlike the emptiness he held when he was Marluxia… and yet so similar. “Were there certain amenities in this place, I believe I would have drunk myself into a stupor by now. Or perhaps death, once again. Yes, there would be peace in that…”

Gritting her teeth, Elrena looks around her. At waves crashing against sand, beyond which is a sun that seems to provide little light in what seems like an endlessly stretching night. Dark rocks, dark sand, and yet a persistent glow. “Where… _are_ we?”

Lauriam opens his mouth, but it’s not his voice that answers.

“The twilit realm. The passage between.”

Elrena turns to the figure behind her—living and connected to light but without a hint of cloak to protect him from the darkness he must have traversed to get here—long silver hair—blindfold on his face—

“ _You_ ,” she breathes.

“Yes, me. Once called Riku, once called Shadow…” he tilts his head back. “Now both. And I do not know your present names, but I know who you once were.”

“Are you here to kill us once again, then?” Lauriam asks.

 _Please_ , Elrena can’t help but think.

The man smiles, so kindly it seems cruel. “The opposite. I would bring you into the light…” he pauses, waiting for their names.

“Lauriam.”

“E-Elrena.”

“Lauriam, Elrena,” he says, holding their names softly—so softly—she _hates_ it.He outstretches his hand, and she can almost imagine the crashing wave of _life_ , terrible blinding life, behind him. “Will you come with me?”

She stares a long moment. Why can she not simply be dead—?

Lauriam steps forward. “Well, I imagine wherever you lead will be more interesting than this empty land.” He turns back to her. “Elrena?”

She swallows, and against everything she wants nods her head. She would not be left alone here. She will follow him, just as she so many times has—

A face flashes into her mind, light-haired and small and looking so _pure_ despite that she was anything but.“Naminé,” she says. “Is she… alive?”

“Less than you,” Riku says, “but in part.”

Elrena’s not sure if that makes her feel worse or better, but all the same she follows Lauriam into a portal that seems to flow effortlessly around Riku. As if he is friends with the darkness even as he radiates light.

She’s not ready for this. She’s not ready at all—

She emerges into the light and covers her eyes immediately, only barely managing not to whimper. _How pitiful_ , she thinks, and forces herself to open her eyes, remove her hand from it. Just to appear something other than broken—

Wait.

 _Wait_.

These buildings… these _skyscrapers…_ she recognizes them.

But never before has she seen them with a sky of stars behind them—bright stars, endless stars—but at least not the sun— _but these stars, so bright_ —

“Welcome,” Riku says, “to the City, reclaimed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there it is! The end of this fic. And yes, there's sequel-bait, but I can't promise anything >_o. Hope you enjoyed!

**Author's Note:**

> Good news, everyone--this work is *complete* prior to posting, and I will be posting a chapter a day until it's all on here. Have fun :)


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